We’re back with more grinding, fitting, cutting, and welding. The fabrication of our intake prototype for the Nissan 350Z continues!

Airbox Fabrication

When we left off, we had fabricated three sides of our airbox and created a 3D model for our MAF-to-filter adapter. The next plan was to continue designing and constructing our airbox, starting with the base.

Template for 350Z intake airbox base

We mapped out our base on steel, made a bend, and trimmed some excess material.

The base of the stock airbox utilizes some interesting mounting points, shown below.

Nissan 350Z intake airbox – lower mounting grommets

Our team would need to design pegs on the base of the airbox assembly, which would sit within these mounts. The lower mounts would then work with an upper mounting bolt to stabilize the airbox during vehicle operation.

Nissan 350Z intake airbox – lower mounting pegs

We then started smoothing our welds to best represent our final product. We are still early in the prototyping phase; even so, this first prototype will be used for dyno testing.

350Z air intake airbox – weld grinding

Check out the nice edge in the shot below!

350Z air intake airbox – weld grinding

Once complete we placed this first prototype in the engine bay to verify fitment of all the features we incorporated.

350Z air intake prototype installed

Completed First Prototype

Once we verified fitment, weather stripping was added to the airbox edges to eliminate the chance of any vibrations or noises during operation. Check out the full intake assembly of our first prototype!

Mishimoto 350Z intake prototypeMishimoto 350Z intake prototype

And a shot looking through the air duct!

Mishimoto 350Z air intake prototype

An additional feature to note with our design is the use of an internal velocity stack. A velocity stack functions to smooth the air entering the intake system. By adding a trumpet shaped end to the intake duct, we can achieve this. This is a huge improvement over a simple flat pipe placed at the inlet to your intake system, which can create a boundary layer of air. The purpose of this is to smooth flow and increase air velocity, which typically results in some form of benefit in terms of power output and a smoother power band. Perhaps this will help promote some gains during our dyno testing. We will see!

This prototype was then bolted into place in preparation for some dyno testing!